The reporting on this entire series of events has been laughable in the West. You have people like Anne Applebaum, a propagandist for the Atlantic Council masquerading as a historian, who will write whatever they pay her to write, no matter how absurd. You have the Wall Street Journal, which seems to be hoping against hope that its journalist can be released from Russia and allowing it to cloud their judgment. Then you have the NY Post, which translates the foreign policy expertise of NY taxi drivers and construction workers everywhere into slightly more grammatically correct language.

Prigozhin is good, good friends with Putin. This was orchestrated. It could have been orchestrated for a number of reasons, such as:

1. Prigozhin gives Putin the excuse to fire Shoigu, who represents old Yeltsin interests in the Russian power structures anyway and whom Putin doesn't really like. It wouldn't happen immediately, but 2-3 months from now after an investigation it will be shown Shoigu did something wrong in the Wagner matter.

2. Prigozhin was luring the Ukes to attack. He's been doing that for a few months now, airing supposed dirty laundry that seems to be aimed at encouraging an attack or reinforcement that would be to the Ukes' disadvantage. First it was Bakhmut, which was going to fall back to Ukraine due to lack of artillery support and Wagner pulling out of its positions. Then he was raving that the Ukes had 200,000 more troops, fresh and with new weaponry, and Russia couldn't withstand them. Then last week he was saying the southern defense lines wouldn't hold and if the Ukes just threw about 20,000 more troops into the meat grinder they could break through. After that he says he's pulling all Wagner troops just as the Ukes say their counteroffensive is going on hold, perhaps to encourage them to try to keep going and lose even more tanks and armored personnel carriers and kill even more of their dwindling supply of cannon fodder.

3. Transferring Wagner to Belarus without making it seem blatantly obvious the troops are going to strike at Kiev would only work after some fabricated issue.

4. More simply, Putin is able to see who turns on him in a crisis moment so he can purge them from the Russian government.

There is the somewhat less likely possibility that Prigozhin just sort of lost it the past few months and realized he was going to be killed, and by making himself a threat he could retain a 5-10% chance of surviving. In any of these scenarios, it is better for Putin to leave him alive.